“Hard, Bitter, Unpleasantly Necessary Duty” a Little-Known World War II Story of the Philippines

A Filipino medical assistant bandages the injured arm of a woman in a PCAU clinic at San Rogue on Leyte Island, January 1945. “Hard, Bitter, Unpleasantly Necessary Duty” A Little-Known World War II Story of the Philippines By David Smollar 6 Prologue Summer 2015 n the steamy dawn of Friday, May 4, 1945, hundreds of Filipino residents in the western Leyte port of Palompon lined the shore along the Visayan Sea. The special U.S. Army team known as PCAU 17, after four months of helping to heal and jump-start their war-torn com- munity, was sailing to another island needing aid. For more than two hours under an already baking sun, they watched the boat slowly make its way from Ithe pier, serenading the departing soldiers and wishing them Godspeed. “The local citizens sought us out to wring our hands, thank us, and bless us, and thank us again in their own version of Bon Voyage,” the medical officer with Philippine Civil Affairs Unit (PCAU) 17 wrote in one of his many letters home. “Lots of emotion was expressed,” he added. “A real poverty stricken mother of a skeletal child I saw during the first days after fighting stopped, reckoned now as long ago in ‘war time,’ handed me a dozen fresh eggs. Another former patient gave me fried chicken. The hospital men and women, they financed a pair of house slippers and tea cloth as a ‘thank you’ for me. “You know, I’m pretty gruff, and I was often damn tough in getting these people to understand how to fight illness and disease, but all this made me, well, downright sentimental. It feels good to know that for them a hospital is no longer a place to shun, not a place to go to die, but rather a place to go to get well.” The medical officer was my father, Leo Smollar. The team of 10 officers and 39 enlisted men had assisted tens of thousands of Filipinos to recover medically, educationally, and eco- nomically from three years of Japanese military occupation. It was one of 30 special units that, between October 1944 and July 1945, followed in the footsteps of invasion forces retaking the Philippines island by island. Each unit provided immediate food relief, re opened schools, helped local government reemerge, assisted fishermen and farmers to resume work, and set up hospitals and clinics to treat war wounds and endemic disease. Top: Dr. Leo Smollar, the author’s father, at the Letters from My Father hospital and dispensary in Palompon, Leyte Island, Shed Light on War Duties Philippines, in early 1945. Smollar was part of special Army civil affairs teams that established medical and other services on Leyte as Japanese forces were Three years ago, I finally unbundled my father’s cache of 700 World pushed out.” Above: In a February 28 letter to his wife, Smollar writes of the gratifying improvement he War II letters to my mother, written while he was overseas for 17 had witnessed—that the locals “have filled out; no months, and saved by her for reasons I will never know. During three longer do I see that look of hunger.” “Hard, Bitter, Unpleasantly Necessary Duty” Prologue 7 for drawing up the Philippines strategy. He knew that the general dearly wanted to avoid chaos in the aftermath of invasion. In an oral history, he recalled, “I’ve always said that I helped write the plan based on the novel. I read it, and reread it, and read it again; a marvel- ous book, it taught you how to do civil affairs.” (Rauh, a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk before the war, later worked for President Harry Tru- man and became a longtime force in the Dem- ocratic Party.) The final plans, which MacArthur forced on a reluctant War Department in Septem- ber 1944, called for the 30 teams to revitalize combat-damaged areas with as little med- dling as possible from regular military units. The idea was that self-contained teams would allow for a shorter period of military government and prepare the islands for indepen- dence, promised by the United States before the Japanese invasion. The officers had specialties in medicine, law enforcement, agriculture, labor relations, and administration; enlisted men were culled almost exclusively from Filipino Americans from California who had volunteered for all- Filipino regiments to fight in the Pacific. A February 1945 Army map shows that Smollar’s unit, PCAU 17, was assigned the western portion of the island, centered at Palompon. “I will finally . put my medical training to work.” decades of medical practice in San Diego, he held military and government posts in the col- never once talked to me about his Philip- ony on and off since the early 1900s and felt a Of the political and military calculus factored pine experiences. But the written chronicle close attachment to its people. In planning to into plans for PCAUs, my father knew noth- (intermixed with deeply personal expres- retake the islands, the general believed deeply ing. In October 1944, he was simply one of sions about family, life, and love) opened a that his prestige was linked to successful post- thousands of soldiers cooling their heels in door for me to research the unusual history combat civil recovery. Hollandia, British New Guinea, awaiting a behind these units and my father’s role. unit assignment. He was spending most days Historian Morton Netzorg, who anno- MacArthur’s Idea: taking advanced coursework on tropical med- tated a massive bibliography of World War II Restore Civil Society icine—he had been sent to the Pacific because works on the Philippines, called the PCAU of that expertise—when word came in early story one that “few Filipinos or Americans Novelist and war correspondent John Hersey’s November designating him as the medical know of even vaguely.” 1944 novel, A Bell for Adano, had fictionalized officer for a civil affairs unit. The PCAUs were the brainchild of Gen. the bungled effort by Allied forces in 1943 to “Thank God I will finally have an opportu- Douglas MacArthur and his civil affairs staff. restore civil society in Sicily after the German nity to put my medical training to work!” he In May 1942, MacArthur escaped by subma- withdrawal, where combat staff officers micro- enthused. For the next several weeks, PCAU rine from the Philippines as the Japanese army managed beleaguered civil affairs personnel. units 9–20 crammed information on Filipino closed in on U.S. forces isolated on the island Lt. Col. Joseph Rauh, the top planner for language, politics, economics, and related top- of Corregidor in Manila Bay. MacArthur had MacArthur, used Hersey’s novel as a template ics. (The first eight units had gone ashore in the 8 Prologue Summer 2015 initial invasion of eastern Leyte on October 20.) PCAU 17 moved west over tortuous moun- His letters affix the desperate human suf- “There is quite a nice crew of lawyers, judges, tain roads and set up in Palompon, the scene fering to the statistics: prosecutors, doctors, college teachers, fellows of heavy fighting through Christmas Day. who have been abroad, quite a contrast from The town had been pummeled by Ameri- The population has been underfed, under- the ‘dese and dosers’ of other units,” he wrote. can air and artillery bombardment, with only clothed and overworked by the Japs. Many, The units transferred to Oro Bay in Dutch two buildings left undamaged; it swarmed many cases of worms and parasitic infes- New Guinea, then sailed on December 21 as with refugees forced to the coastal plain by tations. Child mortality is high. Vitamin part of a 48-ship troop convoy zigzagging its the retreating Japanese. An estimated 25,000 deficiencies and beri-beri are widespread. way to Leyte. On board, my father described Japanese troops remained scattered but Tuberculosis is high. Sanitation is very poor. an atmosphere at once of boredom and appre- potent in mountains to the east. Most common diseases are intestinal and hension, with daily air raid drills. spread by bowel movements done every- “The closer you get to an area of action, Letters Offer Detailed Descriptions where. Must alter the custom of defecating the ‘cinema glamour’ of war presented back Of the Worst of Human Suffering whenever and wherever urge comes. No in the States is exposed for the fraud it is,” hospital but only a half-destroyed two- he wrote. “Everyone here sees war as hard, The first of many medical reports that my room structure used as a clinic. The sick are bitter, unpleasantly necessary duty.” father, along with other PCAU doctors, filed numerous and there’s a continuous stream Only a Christmas Eve variety show pro- weekly with MacArthur’s headquarters in of civilian infected and wounded, some vided a respite, held in the late afternoon Australia (and now stored at the National deliberately bayoneted by Japs. It’s more heat before blackout began; a solo trumpeter Archives) provide only a staccato-like glimpse than enough to make your heart bleed. “brought the crowd to tears with a full-of- into Palompon’s initial medical situation: feeling rendition of White Christmas.” one tent hospital with 27 beds, all filled; 17 In the first week, PCAU-employed laborers Ashore at Dulag city on December 28, the civilian war casualties; two dispensaries (clin- cleared rubble along the shoreline for a perma- unit waited for equipment to be off-loaded ics) with 1,122 patients, a third of them with nent 50-bed hospital in addition to the tent. In amid stifling heat, humidity, monsoon rains tropical ulcers (skin lesions known as jungle a single day on January 6, my father treated 200 and nightly air raids, although MacArthur rot) or yaws (a bacterial infection where skin starving refugees in rags, vaccinated for small- had declared victory on Leyte.

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